Even as early as the day of her birth, the “young lieutenant,” as Mr. Harding and I had always referred to the girl we thought might likely be a boy, there was a distinct resemblance to the Hardings, and more particularly to her distinguished father. As she grows older this resemblance is strikingly like his sister Daisy, but she retains her father’s smile, his eyes, and many of his mannerisms. As she lay in my arms, a few hours old, drawing her mouth into comical contortions, and wrinkling her face in what seemed a thousand wrinkles, I saw Warren Harding—oh, I saw him so strongly that it seemed I was holding a miniature sweetheart in my arms! She was born with black hair which afterwards disappeared to give place to the soft blond fuzz which was more like her mother’s.
I could not nurse her of course, because I did not know how our difficult situation would work out, but oh, how I longed to! Miss Evans put her on a good brand of infant’s milk, and would feed her and then bring her in to me. It seemed to me almost sacrilegious to submit to the treatment I was obliged to undergo in order to have my breasts dried up, and somehow I thought the pain I experienced in this procedure was the merited punishment for not nursing my baby. How strong was my urge to nurse her! Even before she came, when I would lie on the bed and watch the various shapes my body assumed as she moved around inside, I used to think of the natural nourishment process and picture it. I wanted to experience every one of the sensations belonging to a mother. One time, after I had been up a week or so, I took her on my lap and gave her an empty breast that two or three weeks previous had been swollen with milk, and I shall never forget her tiny hands nor the feel of her mouth at my bosom, nor the indescribable thrill that swept over me in those moments of pretended nursing. I just seemed to want to keep her a part of me, and this denial gave the keenest suffering I had ever known.
During those days I had a colored laundress, Mrs. Jones, whose daughter, about eleven or twelve, used to come for my laundry. She also went to the post office for my mail. As soon as I could prop myself up fairly comfortably, I wrote notes to Elizabeth and to Mr. Harding and “Lieut. Edmund Norton Christian.” The one to “Lieutenant Christian,” addressed fictitiously to Paris, I handed to the nurse to mail, for obvious reasons; the other two the little colored girl mailed. My first letter from Mr. Harding after the baby arrived had been mailed from Philadelphia, and was sent to me at the house, 1210 Bond Street, Asbury Park, instead of the post office. It was written in pencil, as most of his letters were, and in it he said he had received my note. Evidently he thought he should take precautionary measures in writing this first letter lest it fall into another’s hands, so he wrote that he had “conveyed the news to the Lieutenant who was proud to hear it.” That was all right and might have served to throw anybody off the track who read the letter had he not followed it immediately with the sentence, “If she looks like her mother, I will be satisfied,” directly alluding to himself as the party who was really interested in the news! Bless his heart! He tried to protect me and himself and everybody, but sometimes he surely did stupid things. Forgetting all about “the Lieutenant” he proceeded in his letter to urge again my leisurely recuperation, and the manner of his concluding would hardly have been construed by an outsider as the heart-promptings of his friend “the Lieutenant” who would obviously have written his own love messages and not sent them second-hand!
42
No sooner was I upon my feet than I was nervous and anxious to get to Chicago to my sister Elizabeth. The superb strength which had been mine before the baby came had completely left me. My appetite was forced, my cheeks were pale, and constant letters from my mother as to when I was coming West worried me terribly.
Several mornings after the baby was born Dr. Ackerman came to see me. He sat on a straight chair at the foot of the bed and took out a notebook. I was amazed at myself for becoming frightened, but somehow my nerves were shattered and things troubled me which amounted to nothing at all. He informed me that he needed certain data for registering the child’s birth. I didn’t know exactly what that might mean to Mr. Harding, and so I inquired if it was necessary to register a child’s birth always. “Unless you want to pay a fine of $100,” he replied in his business-like voice. He said he merely wished to know my maiden name, my husband’s, and our ages, my husband’s business, etc. I thought quickly about whether I ought to tell him at least the partial truth—that I was not married! I didn’t know whether or not it was a criminal offense to say you were married when you were not. I longed to shout the whole truth to the world, that my baby was Warren Harding’s baby, that we were not married in the eyes of the world, but truly married in the sight of God, and that I was proud, proud, proud to be her mother!
Within, I was growing hysterical in those brief moments, but controlled my voice as I told him that my age was twenty-three, my husband’s thirty-two, his business was an officership as Lieutenant in the U. S. Army, and that my name before I was married was “Nanna Eloise Britton.” I said this I thought very clearly, but when he repeated it he said “Emma Eloise Britton?” I nodded. The first name did not matter anyway, I thought, but I wanted my surname to go into the records in the only right way—Britton. I could not give her the name Harding without betraying my darling, but I could give Britton. “Eloise” was a middle name I had adopted when a child in substitution for my real name of “Popham,” which was always so objectionable to me. I have postcards from my father which he addressed to me “Nanna Popham Eloise Evelyn Britton,” the full name I cherished as an ideal combination when a child!
When I had been out of bed about a week, one morning a man called. I heard Mrs. Tonnesen say, “Yes, Mrs. Christian lives here.” I was abnormally apprehensive those days, an inexplicable nervousness seizing me when the least little thing went wrong, and I called downstairs quickly, “What do you want of Mrs. Christian?” I sat down on the top step of the stairs. He called up to me, “What’s your baby’s name?” Immediately I thought maybe something was wrong. They wanted to take her away from me! The most absurd possibilities danced like demons in my mind. “Who wants to know?” I asked, almost quivering. “Gotta have it for record,” he replied, in what seemed to me a surly voice. I breathed a great sigh. “Oh, I see! Well, I haven’t named her yet!” I said. “What! Two weeks or more old, and you haven’t named her?” he shouted. I became frightened again. Maybe this was an offense under the law! “Oh, that’s all right,” I said timidly, “you may register her as ‘Elizabeth Ann!’” Only that morning I had had a letter from my sister Elizabeth in which she said she would love to have me call the baby Elizabeth, and my own name, Nan, didn’t seem to go as well with Elizabeth as Ann. So Elizabeth Ann it was. Elizabeth Ann Christian it was, and was so written into the records of the Department of Vital Statistics in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey. Afterward, when I said it to myself, I used to think, “Elizabeth Ann Harding! Elizabeth Ann Harding!” And as she lay in my arms in bed I would whisper to her, “Say, you darling (a verbal salutation I so often heard from her father), do you know who your dad is? Oh, wait until he sees you! Wait till you see him, sweetheart!” She would lie there complacently blinking her eyes and working her mouth. It seemed to me as if Harding were written in every twist of her lips.
43
I went to New York about six weeks after the baby came, which was about the first week in December. My clothes were very shabby, and so I bought a new hat at Arnold, Constable’s, and some other things I needed. The cape which I had worn all the fall, during the two chilly months before Elizabeth Ann came, now seemed big enough for two, and I was so thin that I was sure I must look ill. The hotels were filled with automobile show visitors, and after trying several places I finally was given a room at the Hamilton Hotel on 73rd Street, though with the stipulation that I would give it up the following day to another guest who had reserved it several days in advance. I registered as Nan Britton, and I remembered it was with almost a sense of relief that I did so. I had moved in an atmosphere of make-believe for so long that somehow it was refreshingly good to be myself.